Thursday,
I am traveling to Iowa for my brother’s wedding, so I will post again in a
week.

I took classical Greek in college. I loved it, sort
of like doing word puzzles. What letter is this squiggle, what is the meaning
of that series of squiggles? One thing I learned was that spacing between words
and punctuation were relatively modern conventions meant to make literacy more
accessible for larger numbers of people.

Since few Greeks learned to read, it was assumed
they could figure out the meaning of the text. Admittedly, Greek was a highly
inflected language (word endings signaled part of speech, verb tense, etc.) so
an ancient Greek kid just had to attend to those things to make sense of the
sentences.

I guess. I used to be a first grade teacher and
someone who worked with struggling readers, so there had to be some problems
with that theory (or why invent spacing and punctuation).

I digress. Heraclitus was a pithy kind of guy, lots
of quotes are attributed to him. Like the one above. Tammy Greenwood (Two Rivers), one of my session
presenters at a Southern California Writers Conference session used the quote
of this blog title as she discussed a topic many conference sessions addressed.

At heart, a novel is about characters. The plot is
just a device for showcasing their human frailties and strengths. The humanity
of the characters is what keeps us reading, not that they solved the problem in
this book, or didn’t. It is the quest to solve the problem that reveals those
aspects of the characters we can relate to, or not.

Tammy said, “Getting to know your characters is your
main job as a novelist.” Until you know your characters as well as you know
your best friend, you can’t reel in the reader with characters who don’t jar.
That got me thinking.

Even when the reader doesn’t know what a character
will do, once the action is revealed the reader knows it was an appropriate
action. One of the roads the character could have taken on the way to
resolution. And, if it is not a consistent action, the author reveals something
about the character that justifies an act seemingly out of character (so to
speak).

I am thinking about some of my WiPs that are giving
me fits. In every one (so far), I am struggling because the characters are the
glue holding my great story premise together, not the propelling force that
will move the action forward. So, looks like I am going to be spending a lot
more time in conversation with Alli, Isabella, Carrie, Lucinda, and oh, so many
others.

Character IS destiny. Who they are, what they need, how they react.
That is what makes a novel compelling.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Hey, Authors! A few posts ago I gave some relationship
quotes to build stories around. Well, here are some more I have collected.
Surely one or more of these will resonate so you can create a viable story
premise.

To turn one of these into a story premise, try these steps:

1)Select a quote that speaks to you. (I know, that
is so woo-woo! Just do it!)

2)Identify the characters that first come into
your mind for the roles in this relationship.

3)Describe each character’s perspective on or
relationship to the quote in 25 words or fewer. (Do you know that most people
misuse “less” and “fewer”?)

4)Where is this happening and when? What is the
relationship of the characters to the where and when?

5)Write down five “what ifs”: (Using the first one
below) What if a woman’s boyfriend doesn’t come home one night? What if he
called later to say he was in trouble and couldn’t make it there? What if the
reason he didn’t come home was that a love child showed up at work hunting for
her father? What if the woman saw her lover and his child, not knowing of the
relationship? What if the child is malevolent and wants to hurt her birth
father?

6)See how that worked? If you don’t have a story
idea going after 5 what-if’s, maybe you should choose another line of work.

So read, enjoy, and speculate with the relationship quotes
below. Can’t wait to read your book!

Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very
old human need. ~Margaret Mead

Man is a knot into which relationships
are tied. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight
to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

If you want to feel rich, just count the things that money can’t buy. ~Proverb

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to
go hand in hand. ~Emily Kimbrough

If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. ~Erica Jong

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade. ~Leo
Buscaglia

For lack of an occasional expression of love, a relationship strong at the
seams can wear thin in the middle. ~Robert Brault

Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance
to be our friend. ~Robert Brault

Assumptions are the termites of relationships. ~Henry Winkler

Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always
tickles. ~Nora Roberts

I like her because she smiles at me and means it. ~Anonymous

Hope is a waking dream. ~Aristotle

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.
~Miles Franklin

In the end, who among us does not choose to be a little less right to be a
little less lonely. ~Robert Brault

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at
the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach,
because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.
~Frederick Buechner

Present your family and friends with their eulogies now - they won't be able to
hear how much you love them and appreciate them from inside the coffin.
~Anonymous

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he
whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said
Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of
you." ~A.A. Milne

I felt it shelter to speak to you. ~Emily Dickinson

Are we not like two volumes of one book? ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the
person who loves you enough chance to love you enough. ~Dinah Shore